high ho, high ho, it's off to sleep we go
by smileyfacebabe
Summary: Itachi comes home after finals to find his house isn't as empty as he thought it would be. (College/modern AU, slightly ItaSaku)


Author's Note: Not read through enough to catch any typos. Short, barely shippy thing because I have five kittens (flea ridden assholes) running around my living room. Also because I'm tired. Enjoy.

Dedicated: Sonya. And my cuddle asshole kitten Caboose. But mostly Sonya.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

* * *

It should have been obvious, but it wasn't. Itachi was tired and distracted, having finished his last final only a few hours before. He should have stayed in his room for the night, headed back to his family's home the next day, but he wasn't keen on getting caught up in his housemate's wild, post-finals party, so he had loaded up the car the second he had finished and hopped on the road. Six hours of driving later (three restroom breaks and one break for a meal of doughnuts, because by God he deserved some doughnuts after the hellish final he had just barely survived), he was home. But he was tired all the way to his bones, desperate for his bed and some sleep, even though it was only four in the afternoon. His parents' cars weren't home and a quick run through of his memory told him Sasuke was still at school at baseball practice. He had the house completely to himself.

He sighed in relief and kicked the front door shut behind him. His suitcase full of half-folded clothes, books, and his laptop bumped against his heels as he dragged it down the hall. He normally wasn't a slob, but he kicked his shoes off barely five steps down the hall, leaving them behind him to gather up later. His bedroom was on the second floor, likely to be dusty and without sheets on the bed, since his mother wasn't expecting him until the weekend, so he aimed himself toward the living room in search of the couch.

He collapsed on the couch with a undignified groan, his limbs half hanging off, his suitcase forgotten on the floor. He wrinkled his nose against an unfamiliar smell before squirming like a child untl he was curled so that all his limbs fit on the couch.

Sasuke would have had a fit if he had seen his older brother in such a state. Shisui wouldn't have let him forget it, probably until the day he snapped and strangled his poor, ridiculous cousin. He also would have taken a ridiculous number of photos with his phone, posting them to all the media sites he could as proof that "Itachi wasn't a fucking robot, dear Lord, someone call the presses".

As ridiculous as that sounded, it had happened before. Itachi had been thirteen. Shisui had sported a black eye for nearly a week. Itachi was only letting his guard down now because he knew for a fact his cousin was out of the country and wouldn't be back for another few weeks. And while Itachi loved his older cousin, truly and deeply, there was a limit of the shit he was willing to put up with after three days straight of all-nighters and finals cramming.

And that list did not include 20+ likes on a picture of him wearing a wrinkled t-shirt that had once been red and a pair of grey sweatpants, which, in his defense, had been the only clean clothes not in the trunk of his car this morning when his alarm had gone off. To be quite fair the shirt wasn't even his and though he didn't remember buying the sweatpants they were in his size an had been in his laundry for the past three months. Any teasing Sasuke tried to inflict upon him about his attire would be met with a sharp reminder about his younger brother's steadfast belief for many, many years that butterflies ate human flesh and would therefore devour him within a second.

Itachi felt his lips curl into a faint, tired grin at the memory of Sasuke's seven year old face twisted into genuine horror as a butterfly landed on his shoe. It was the last thought he remembered having before everything went dark and quiet, sleep finally overtaking him. However it could not last.

The muted sound of giggles eventually woke Itachi enough to make him open his eyes. It was darker than he remembered it being, but not dark enough to mean it was completely night. His head ached, most likely in part to caffeine over-dose, but probably also because of a severe lack of un-interrupted sleep. He focused on breathing, trying to ignore the sound of hushed laughter that was still slithering over his senses, but he couldn't slip back into the dark peace of sleep.

He was so out of it, in fact, that he didn't realize there was a weight on him until it moved.

"Urk," he slurred, jolting in surprise. In retaliation whatever was on it squirmed, sharp claw-like things digging into his hip where it was curled. There was a scramble around his feet, more claws digging into the flesh of his ankle in between his pants' leg and sock. He yelped a little bit louder, the giggles stopped, and then, with a short flurry of more claws dancing down his side, the thing(s?) lying on him vanished.

"Oh god," someone breathed, someone vaguely familiar. "Itachi, Christ, are you okay?"

"No," he said shortly. He wanted to go back to sleep, but last time he checked nothing in his house possessed claws and an affintly for cuddling. "What," he asked, face still pressed firmly against the couch.

"Um," the voice said, just before Sasuke's friend Sakura dropped into his line of vision. She was all pale skin, jean shorts, and bright red tank top, her pink hair tangled around some kind of pen. She propped her chin on the edge of the couch several inches from his face, lips quirked into something approaching an apologetic smile.

Itachi didn't trust that smile. This was the same girl that had once put lizards in his bed as a dare. (She had been eight. There had been at least twelve lizards. He still hadn't fully recovered from it.) But her green eyes were bright and the freckles that were only barely there on her cheeks deepened as her smile widened, her dimple showing just a bit.

"Sakura," Itachi growled. "What was on my legs?"

"It was Happy, Grumpy, and Dopey," she said. There was something in her voice that sounded like a police siren, blaring at him full force.

"Happy. Lucky. And Dopey."

She nodded, chin bouncing the couch. He considered briefly shoving her off, but on the off-chance that his mother learned of it she would be very, very cross about poor little Sakura being man-handled like that. So instead he groaned once more, rolling onto his back and drawing into a semi-upright position.

Three little gleaming pairs of eyes peeked at him from over the arm of the couch. He bit his tongue on some rather foul curses he had picked up from Hidan before slumping back against the opposite arm of the couch.

"Why are there three kittens in my house," he asked the ceiling. Sakura's laughter tickled down his spine. He glanced over only to find her looking at him through her lashes coyly, pink lips plush and shiny with moisture.

It was a look he wasn't completely unfamiliar with from the girls back at university. To have it directed at him by a girl he had known when she had still been sucking her thumb unsettling to the max. For a second he considered climbing back in his car and going back to the house, even if it meant an annoyed call from his mother and a hell of a hangover once Kisame pulled out the heavy stuff.

But he was tired and the couch was comfortable and Sakura wasn't six years old anymore. So he slumped further to the side and she sat up, curling so that her shoulder was pressed faintly against his forearm, and when she smiled at him, wide and mischievous he didn't scowl as much as he could have.

"There's actually seven kittens," she said, rather proudly. "I caught most of them while Naruto and Sasuke cried like little babies."

Itachi raised an eyebrow at her and with another little laugh Sakura leapt excitedly into the story of how seven kittens (all named after the seven dwarves from Snow White, what the hell) had come to live in his house. Itachi settled down, watching the pink haired minx gesture, and out of the corners of his eyes he caught little movements as seven little balls of fur scurried across his living room.


End file.
